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(Spoilers ahead for anyone who hasn’t seen The Babadook. As she reads the book, she realizes that it’s actually terrifying, but it’s too late - she’s conjured up the menacing supernatural figure known as Babadook. It’s unclear how the book got there, but Amelia, a widow and the movie’s protagonist, reads it to her son Sam anyway. In writer-director Jennifer Kent’s movie, the Babadook manifests itself in a baba-book called Mister Babadook. (Several times throughout the day, my spirit yearns to Photoshop the Babadook, jaunty top hat and all, with its finger claws wrapped around a brick, into old pictures of the Stonewall Riots.) But it’s also a fascinating reminder how everything you think is strange and funny on the internet is probably the invention of a bored teenager - and could be co-opted and destroyed at any moment.īut while the Babadook might be a queer hero for the ages, and its ascension as an LGBTQ icon has been almost a year in the making, the fleeting nature of internet-born and bred phenomena suggests that we should appreciate its queer legacy while we still can.

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It’s appreciation of a horror movie that turned into whisper of a joke that is now a well-established meme. The Babadook’s rise to queer legend is a remarkable one. “While I must make it clear that I was not the first to acknowledge the Babadook's burgeoning status as a queer icon, I do count myself among the most vocal supporters of the movement to recognize the Babadook as a radical representation of queerness.” “Haunting a small white family in an Australian suburb is a radical act, and the Babadook did that,” John Paul Brammer, a journalist and queer Babadook enthusiast, told me. Its existence is defiance, and it seeks to break down the borders of acceptability and establishment. Mister Babadook, as the figure is referred to in the movie, is queer in the most empirical sense. But while its anointment as an icon might be less straightforward, the Babadook’s status as an LGBTQ hero is ultimately no less valid. Like the icons who came before him, the Babadook’s story is one of hardship, endurance, and queer protest - though that might not be immediately apparent. Madonna, Kylie Minogue, Lady Gaga, Britney Spears, Beyoncé, and Carly Rae Jepsen make music that brings joy to their fans. Cher and Dolly Parton endured struggle and hardship, but have never stopped working.

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David Bowie and George Michael showed us how to live free before they died. Bea Arthur and Elizabeth Taylor were allies to the LGBTQ community, as talented as they were selfless. Judy Garland’s death is apocryphally cited as inspiration for the Stonewall Riots. Pop-culture LGBTQ heroes come in all shapes and sizes, but those who join the pantheon of legends are often revolutionary, sometimes tragic figures who inspire the community regardless of their professed sexual orientation.

There are two types of people in this world: People who know that the Babadook - the namesake of the acclaimed 2014 Australian horror film - is a queer icon, and people who will soon find out that the Babadook is a queer icon.